About us
ABOUT US
Hi! We’re Tom and Lisa Benjamin, the husband-and-wife owners of Go Cotswolds.
Director & Head of Transport & Operations
Director & Head of Sales & Marketing
We’re both British, but our story began in 2007 in a backpacker’s hostel in Buenos Aires, Argentina! A chance meeting turned into a friendship, then love. Six years later, we got engaged in South Africa, and in 2014 we were married on the pitch at Tom’s local cricket club!
Between us, we’ve travelled to more than 50 countries around the world. In 2017, our daughter Zoe was born – she had a passport from 2 months old, so now the adventures continue as a family of three.
But, wherever in the world our family wanders, there’s no place like home. Home for us is Alcester, a small, friendly town just 10 minutes from Shakespeare’s birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s right on the northern edge of the Cotswolds, and it’s where Tom grew up, spending his childhood hiking the hills, running local trails and playing cricket in the Cotswold Hills village league. That’s where his passion for the Cotswolds was born – and it didn’t take long for Lisa to fall in love with the area too!
With our love for independent travel and a spirit of adventure, we founded Go Cotswolds to show visitors around this beautiful region we call our ‘back yard’. We create the kind of experiences we enjoy on our own travels, right here at home – friendly, authentic, responsible tours, with expert local guides who feel more like friends than teachers.
Our Driver-Guides
Elaine binks
Driver-Guide
Dave Hale
Driver-Guide
MARTIN HALLIDAY
Driver-Guide
JASON HILL
Driver-Guide
Wendy Necar
Driver-Guide
Mark Pritchard
Driver-Guide
Steve Rainsberry
Driver-Guide
peter vlahos
Driver-Guide
colin wilson
Driver-Guide
Our small team of driver-guides are all local to Stratford-upon-Avon and the Cotswolds. Tom and Lisa hand-picked each one, not for their historical knowledge or encyclopaedic brains, but first and foremost for their warm, friendly, kind personalities. Each one has a cool confidence and ability to make you feel at ease, without being brash, overbearing or ‘in your face’.
That’s not to say our guides don’t also have incredible knowledge! What sets us apart, however, is that our live tour commentary isn’t just a learned script – you’ll learn a lot, yes, but our tours are full of personal, unique, funny, heart-warming, interesting stories that only a local person could share.
Read our Tripadvisor reviews, and you’ll find our guests rave about our guides!
(Interested in joining our team? Check out our Careers page!)
Our behind-the-scenes team
Sales & Marketing Administrator
Assistant Transport & Operations Manager
Our business simply wouldn’t function without our fabulous admin team! In fact, we don’t know how we ever coped without Sue and Patrick, who both joined Go Cotswolds in 2024.
Sue is our resident sales and marketing guru. She’s the one who handles all the bookings, answers all your questions, plans, writes and posts all our social media content, and brings all the good vibes (and grapes) to the Go Cotswolds office!
As a guest on our tours, you’ll probably never meet Patrick, but as our Assistant Transport & Operations Manager, Pat literally keeps Go Cotswolds’ wheels moving! Supporting Tom, Pat makes sure our team of guides all know which tours they’re doing, on what day, in which vehicle and with which passengers (no small feat!). He also ensures our vehicles are kept in tip-top condition by scheduling regular maintenance and managing our cleaning team, and keeps our fleet and drivers safe and legally compliant.
Work with Us
Want to join our team? We’re always looking for new talent to join the Go Cotswolds family, whether as a driver-guide or a vital member of our office team. Check out our Careers page.
Travel trade? See our Travel Trade page to find out more about how we work with travel agents, tour operators, DMCs and more.